{"id":81857,"date":"2021-02-14t13:15:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-14t18:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/48e130086c.nxcli.net\/?p=81857"},"modified":"2023-10-05t09:20:02","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05t13:20:02","slug":"how-to-create-your-firms-cas-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2021\/02\/14\/how-to-create-your-firms-cas-team\/","title":{"rendered":"how to create your firm\u2019s cas team"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>plus how to boost their skillsets. by hitendra patil<\/i> \u201cwe do not have the staffing for client accounting services.\u201d<\/p>\n non-cas firms cite this as the topmost reason for not being able to offer cas. nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n more:<\/b> technology and your cas clients<\/a> | will 2021 be your cash-flow year?<\/a> | identifying the right clients for cas<\/a> | cas is, first, a communication challenge<\/a> | which of your existing clients are cas-fit?<\/a> | client accounting services: the definitive guide<\/a> experience of firms that offer cas, including that of small firms with fewer than five staff members, proves beyond doubt that you do not need more staff to start offering cas. even solo practitioners provide cas. the only thing you need to begin your cas journey is to be ruthless, relentless and fearless to leverage newer and cloud technologies. automation, integration and even artificial intelligence make it easier, faster and cheaper to perform some repetitive, time-consuming work of accounting firms. in other words, within the same productive hours your firm has now, you can produce similar work for four to 10 times more number of clients. imagine the impact on your firm\u2019s profitability! and this is just one such example of how technology can provide you with efficiency and productivity gains. you can automate many of your routine processes to varying degrees. it is, of course, essential that you optimize your firm\u2019s technology stack and processes.<\/p>\n given this understanding that you do not<\/strong> need more staff to start offering cas, let us now examine how to create your firm\u2019s cas team.<\/p>\n cas is more interactive than traditional transactional services. it means clients start expecting different results, processes and how you treat them. these different expectations require your entire firm to adjust the mindset, skillsets and toolsets. to deliver on the different expectations, you want to ensure that you and your team are on board with the adjustments required. some examples of how the different expectations manifest in your day-to-day work are:<\/p>\n depending upon several factors such as industry, size of business, growth trend of the company, expansion\/diversification plans of the business owners, etc., the expectations and hence the way you work with your cas clients can be different. one key factor in catering to different expectations is to identify the timeline of when business owners make their business decisions and divide your services into<\/p>\n as much as possible, make all endeavor to assist the business owners while and before they make their business decisions.<\/p>\n if your firm is newly entering into the cas segment, formally make one person the \u201ccas champion\u201d of your firm. this person should understand your firm\u2019s processes, but you need to relieve this person from some of the \u201cwork-producing\u201d responsibilities. this is to enable him\/her to focus on identifying the different expectations, creating ways and reports to fulfill those expectations and implementing performance evaluation and measurement parameters. this person should conduct a periodic review of your firm\u2019s cas performance from cost, client service quality and profitability point of view.<\/p>\n if your firm is already offering cas, it still makes sense to have one person to be the designated cas champion of your firm. cas evolves in every firm, and there are no real best practices you can simply copy-paste into your firm\u2019s cas processes. to help your cas offering develop and mature, you need one person accountable for it.<\/p>\n in a separate research and analysis i conducted based on disc profile assessments as the base, i found common, predominant personality traits and the key drivers of 200 successful accountants. the list below shows the most common personality traits of successful accountants:<\/p>\n top four key traits:<\/strong><\/p>\n the next five top traits:<\/strong><\/p>\n the next three key traits:<\/strong><\/p>\n least common traits:<\/strong><\/p>\n what drives successful accountants?<\/strong><\/p>\n the list below shows the most common drivers of successful accountants.<\/p>\n top six key drivers:<\/strong><\/p>\n the next four top drivers:<\/strong><\/p>\n least common drivers:<\/strong><\/p>\n i know this is debatable, and the research sample size may not truly represent the accounting profession. but the accountants exhibiting these traits were more successful \u2013 per the most common definitions of success. it does not mean accountants who do not show these traits are not, or may not, be successful.<\/p>\n how to raise the human skillsets of your team members<\/strong><\/p>\n it is essential to identify who among your team members are better suited to \u201cproduce\u201d the work and who is more adept at interacting with the customers. you may or may not use any assessments like disc profiles. but you should attempt to observe your team to know the difference in their human skill sets. from my interactions with several accounting firm owners and their staff, here are some ways in which you can raise the human skillsets of your cas team members:<\/p>\n technical skillsets, i.e., knowledge and skills that help people produce accurate, timely and high-quality work, are the foundation of cas offerings. your cas offering needs to help clients make better and timely business decisions. you cannot achieve this result if your team does not have strong technical skillsets.<\/p>\n your team\u2019s baseline technical skillsets will be based on these four key factors:<\/p>\n as your firm\u2019s cas practice grows, you will most likely experience that your cas team gets divided into the front-office and back-office teams.<\/p>\n you will do so based on human and technical skillsets. it is okay to let that happen. the aim is to leverage the core strengths of each team member. but when this segregation happens, it also results in an increased need for internal coordination so that you minimize \u201ci will check and revert\u201d kind of communications with your clients. it requires real-time sharing and access to shared information related to each client that two or more staff members work on. cloud and collaborative technology can easily make this happen. you would want to reduce internal emails and instead move to online shared spaces, e.g., google\u2019s g-suite, microsoft teams, cloud cabinet\/cloud files storage solutions, collaborative cloud solutions for accounting, payroll, taxes, etc.<\/p>\n it will also make increasing sense to provide your clients with a single point of contact \u2013 a staff member at your firm who is in the \u201cfront office.\u201d it helps avoid a bad customer experience if a client has to interact with multiple staff members periodically. as long as your firm shares real-time information between the front- and back-office staff, it is easily possible to create such \u201cfront office client success representatives.\u201d<\/p>\n i am assuming you and your team are already producing reasonably good work for your clients. now, you want to up your game to provide a great cas offering. i have witnessed several such transitions of accounting firms that went from the usual, now increasingly commoditized and increasingly automated transactional work to the higher end, higher value, higher fees and higher profitability cas segment. one of the most critical requirements for cas success is the upskilling of your team. here are some effective methods that i have regularly seen to work when training cas teams:<\/p>\n <\/a>
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\naccountaneur: the entrepreneurial accountant<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
\nexclusively for pro members. <\/span><\/strong>log in here<\/a> or 2022世界杯足球排名 today<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\ntechnology can perform tasks like write-up that traditionally you or your staff did manually. such automation can save you 75 percent to 95 percent of the time taken for such work. in my experience of interacting with several firms, just in write-up work, if you automate the work of 75 percent of your existing clients, your cost of producing such work can go down by about 60 to 65 percent, and the gross profit from such work can go up by 50 to 55 percent.<\/p>\ncas \u2013 different expectations<\/h3>\n
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the cas champion<\/h3>\n
cas and human skillsets<\/h3>\n
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cas and technical skillsets<\/h3>\n
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cas front and back office<\/h3>\n
how to train your cas team<\/h3>\n
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\nplus how to boost their skillsets.<\/strong>
\nby hitendra patil<\/em>
\naccountaneur: the entrepreneurial accountant<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1363,"featured_media":48696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3058,1905,1363,3120,3002],"tags":[3445,3447],"class_list":["post-81857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-client-accounting-services","category-clients-and-service","category-featured","category-pro-member-exclusive","category-special","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n